The Soloist

by Mark Salzman

Overview

As a child, Renne showed promise of becoming one of the world's greatest cellists. Now, years later, his life suddenly is altered by two events: he becomes a juror in a murder trial for the brutal killing of a Buddhist monk, and he takes on as a pupil a Korean boy whose brilliant musicianship reminds him of his own past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307814258
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/21/2011
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Mark Salzman is the author of Iron & Silk, an account of his two years in China; Lost in Place, a memoir; and the novels The Laughing Sutra, The Soloist, and Lying Awake.

Editorial Reviews

Salzman just gets better and better. His memoir "Iron and Silk" (1987) was a hit, and his first novel, "The Laughing Sutra" (1990), was funny and smart, but this book is a jewel. Reinhart Sundheimer was a child prodigy who could coax the very music of the gods from a cello even before he could touch the floor with his feet while seated. He spent his youth studying with an old master and performing around the world. But then, just as inexplicably as it arrived, the magic evaporated, and Sundheimer was left high and dry with no social life to speak of, no sexual experiences, an unsatisfying university job, and a profound sense of failure. This miasma lasts well into his thirties until Sundheimer agrees, albeit reluctantly, to accept a Korean boy as a student. Shy little Kyung-hee is a genuine prodigy whose pure and intuitive response to music acts as a balm to Sundheimer's bruised and neglected soul. At the same time, Sundheimer is summoned to jury duty. He ends up assigned to a case that involves the murder of a Zen Buddhist master by a novice disciple. Sundheimer is forced to broaden his participation in life. He must interact with his fellow jurors, including an attractive woman who tries to get him to loosen up, and consider weighty questions about the meaning of guilt, sanity, responsibility, and the tricky relationship between teacher and student. Slowly and self-consciously, Sundheimer attains a renewed sense of himself and discovers how to find peace in our jarring world. This is a beautiful novel, a veritable concerto. Salzman's intonation is flawless, his themes infinitely ponderable, his symmetry and resolution captivating and uplifting.

Donna Seaman

Jury duty in a murder trial helps resolve a classical musician's deep professional crisis—in a haunting second novel from the author of The Laughing Sutra (1990) and Iron and Silk (1986), Salzman's acclaimed book (and later movie) about China. Cellist Reinhart (Renne) Sundheimer, the son of German Jews who fled to America, was once a child prodigy. After the war, his mother returned to Germany so he could study with world-famous cellist Johannes von Kempen, who had retired from the orchestra rather than endure false charges of Nazi sympathies. The ancient maestro, with his inspirational dignity, became the most important person in young Renne's life, softening its loneliness (no playmates, no girlfriends). Then, tragedy: at 18, a conjectural hearing problem drove Renne from the concert stage. When Salzman's story begins, Renne is 34, a cello teacher at UCLA, still a virgin, still grimly determined to concertize again. Two events reshape his identity. He becomes deeply involved in teaching a new prodigy, Kyung-hee, a nine-year-old Korean-American, and he serves as a juror in the trial of a Zen student accused of murdering his master. Salzman skillfully interweaves flashbacks with the nurturing of Kyung-hee and the story of the trial and its offshoot, a budding romance between Renne and fellow-juror Maria-Teresa, an attractive married woman. Renne's insecurity with women snuffs out the romance; then he finds himself the lone holdout for a guilty- but-insane verdict and the object of his fellow-jurors' contempt. Yet the two traumas cause Renne's regeneration as musician and as moral being: he sees the trial as "his graduate recital" for his old master, while he serenelyguides his young prot‚g‚ toward a brilliant future. Salzman's handling of his weighty theme—the passing of torches as the ennobling essence of civilization—is unfailingly light and delicate: this is lovely, offbeat movie material.

Kirkus Reviews